Refining My Ideas

I've made this into a blog post so I can type out my thought process and make decisions on certain things about my ideas.

There are a few things I would like to discuss/ debate:

• What time period should I set my idea in?

• Should I design 3 magical girls instead or stick to my plan of having 2 magical girls and 2 enemies?

First of all, I'm going to write down my entire idea:

Long ago, before the creation of the universe, there existed nothing but 2 souls fused together into a single entity.

One of the souls, Olmera, who could be seen as the "good" soul, was the ineffable everlasting light, full of creativity and the longing to create life. Vaethillis on the other-hand, who could be seen as "evil" wanted nothing to exist. It represented the void, darkness and misanthropy.

One day, both Olmera and Vaethillis broke free of the single entity that held them together. Olmera started creating. She began with time, and slowly but steadily created planets, weather, nature, and eventually, life.

Vaethillis started to corrupt Olmera's creations. Turning things evil, causing death, destruction and decay.

Olmera grew tired of this, and trapped Vaethillis inside a tiny planet, at the furthest corner of the universe.

Eventually, over the course of thousands of years, the magic that held Vaethillis inside his planet prison weakened, and he broke free.

Despite his hatred for creation, he took portions of his soul and placed them into 5 mounstrous beings that he had created, each with their own realms. Why was this? He wanted to get revenge on Olmera for trapping him away, so his plan was to turn the entire universe into his pit of empty void and suffering, and the 5 monstrous beings would help him, placing them in different areas of the universe to cause destruction and misery.

In response, Olmera chose 3 magical girls from the most advanced planet she made and offered them the thing they most desire in exachange for saving the universe. She filled them with power and magic and sent them on their way through the 5 monster realms. Can they make their way through all 5 of the monster's realms, kill the monsters, then defeat Vaethillis once and for all?

And for the most basic version of the plot:

3 magical girls are chosen to save the universe from being destroyed.

What time period should I set my idea in?

If I set it in the past, I will have to do research into that time period as what what people are doing, the technology and so on. The backstories I was planning for my characters were going to be mainly set in the now, and I really want to set it in the now, have computers and phones and technology, but I realised something.

If I set it in the present, wouldn't it be weird to have medevil style warriors, rogues and mages running around? Could I design futuristic classes? Why would someone be running around in heavy armour when the technology is there to have much more effective armour for a fraction of the weight?

I want my characters to be taken seriously and match the world they are in.

Do I make a medevil style world with characters matching that, being the classic mages/ rogues OR do I make a present/futuristic style world with futuristic style characters to match that?

I was excited about making armour and weapons in the style of the middle age times, but how am I going to make the characters backstories interesting enough? Women were treated so badly back then, but I also need to remember that this is a FANTASY world, so technically I can do whatever.

Another thing I need to consider is that I'm basing my game around magical girls, and a lot of magical girl anime's are set in present times. BUT, in order for the game to be successful, it needs to be something new, so perhaps it could work out.

Maybe fashion could play a role in this? What if I set the world in modern/future times, but have the FASHION of medevil times? Or set the world in post-aplolictic times? This would fit in with the evil god Vaethilis destroying worlds? Urban Fantasy maybe?

Or I could just stick to the simple idea of setting it in medieval style times, before the advanced technology we have today existed. It would make more sense to have it this way with the whole evil god vs good god thing going on as more if not all people are likely to be religious.

I have thought of another Idea whilst thinking about all the different anime's I've watched, and I thought of the plot of both Re:Zero and Sword Art Online.

Both anime's take characters from their normal world, which is similar to the present we have now, and place them in a completely different world where modern technology doesn't exist (apart from in SAO, but it still looks like it's based in the middle ages).

This could solve the problem I'm having! Girls from across the globe (which is set in modern day times) are chosen to become magical girls, they make a pact with good god Olmera, they save the world and gain magical powers (become magical girls) and in return they get the one thing they most desire. They are sent to a different world, which is set in middle ages/medieval style times, that does not have anywhere close to the technology we have now, to defeat vaethillis's minions and save that planet from utter destruction. This world is Vaethillis's base of operations, with different sections of the world belonging to his minions, or, their realms. Civilization is still around to the parts that are unaffected, but it won't be long before the entire planet is taken over.

Thinking about this, it wouldn't work out as I would be changing my base Idea when i really don't want to do that. There are just too mnay things that could be questioned with this idea.

I've decided. I'm setting it in medevil/middle ages style times.

Should I design 3 magical girls instead or stick to my plan of having 2 magical girls and 2 enemies?

I ask myself this for a few reasons.

I don't think I'm going to have enough time to create 4 differen't characters, let alone 3 actually.

If I decide to go with just the 3 magical girls, will they still tie in with the whole "Legend" theme? I guess magical girls can be seen as legends? But I was going to base the enemies off of mythological creatures, which obviously ties in with the legend theme.

Even if I don't design the enemies, my idea still ties in with the legend theme right? Just because I'm not making the enemy characters which have a direct tie with the world legend, doesn't mean what I'm creating isn't tied in with legend.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I can confirm that I am going to be creating JUST magical girls. This will be easier for me to do in the time frame I have/ My aim is to create 3 magical girls, as I have researched 3 different classes, BUT, that is my ultimate goal, what i THINK i'm going to create are 2 characters as if I'm running out of time and can't see myself getting them all completed, I will go with the most popular choice of class from the survey I created for my characters.

For example, if I think I can only create one character in time, (which is NOT going to happen but this is just an example) that character will be a mage as that was the most popular choice. If I think I can create 2 in time it will be a Mage and a Rogue, and if i think i can crate all 3 then it will be mage, rogue and fighter. That is how I will priorities the making of my characters, and I am allowing myself to be flexible in the amount of characters I'm making. I'm thinking of this in a game marketing perspective.

Say for example I WAS making characters for a game, but I run out of time. Consumers would be more happy if the type of characters they prefer to play are the ones that have been made, they would still be upset that the other characters have not been made, but if their favorite character to play had not been made, they would be more upset and potentially not buy the game. I hope that makes sense.

Last of all;

Should magic be pre-exsisting in the world that I'm setting it in?

I honestly have no idea.

I could have the world being into magic already, but at a very weak form compared to what the magical girls will receive. This would make for some cool backstories. There could be guilds, or schools, for magic. But what kind of magic? The magic wouldn't be too powerful, it could be things such as telekenisis, elemental magic?

I have a new idea which I think i might use. Magic does already exsist, but only in around 15 percent of people in the world. In some countries, it is accepted, with the highest noble people being magic users, but in other places it is forbidden, people are executed if found to be magic users. This could make for an interesting background for the mage character! She could be one of the few with magic, but has to hide it and practice in secret. Her ultimate desire could be to travel to the country where the mages guild exsists, and to become apart of that.

Or I could just have the world as a completely normal world.

I want to change my initial audience. I first wanted my game idea to be all about anime style magical girls but I've realised that's not the way I want to go with this. I want my characters to be magical girls, but not anime style magical girls, I want my characters to have deep rich backgrounds

Conclusion:

Next Steps:

Research middle ages/medevil times, clothes, ect, the tech they have

Start making character backstories!

Create a world map! one for the normal world and another for the monster realm world! I also needs to design my world, in order to create good backstories. For this I will be researching exsisting fantasy worlds as well as the world in medeviel times, and using a fantasy world template sheet to design my fantasy world. Ideally do this before designing characters.